Fashion Designer Creates Ecological Clothing for The Dead

Just because you shuffle off your mortal coil doesn’t mean you can just shuffle off good fashion. Not when there’s clothes for the dead to be had.

In all seriousness, Garments for the Grave takes a sensible, some might say postmodern, view of burial clothes. Invoking contemporary tendencies toward cold practicality, designer Pia Interlandi’s new clothes are purpose-made. Not seeing the point of sending off the dead in their finest raiments, Interlandi instead designed something simple that would do the job of covering the body before decomposing quickly along with the body, so that everything that goes in the ground can return to the great atomic cycle of life.

The sheer, white garments are made from cotton, linen, and hemp, all of which will start to decay ahead of the body. They’re also made to be more loose-fitting, and easier to place on the deceased before they’re sent on their way.

There’s definitely a harsh rationality to the whole enterprise that might put some off, but it’s hard to argue that this doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. After all, the departed won’t be needing their finest fashions where they’re going – with apologies to the Ancient Egyptians.